Five games into the season, some Chargers fans are already talking about next year’s draft and the talent upgrades Tom Telesco needs to make.

The media slobs, meantime, are calling it a rebuilding year, and if not enough tickets are sold for San Diego's next game, the first blackout of a Monday Night Football telecast in 13 years will ensue.

There’s a lot of drama to tune out, and, yes, those are 5-0 records next to the AFC West-leading Broncos and Chiefs.

But in Philip Rivers, Antonio Gates, Nick Hardwick and Eric Weddle -- keepers of the blue-and-gold flame -- the Chargers lean on four longtime starters who’ve seen too many soap operas to pay them heed.

“It’s a week to week league. We were ‘back’ two weeks ago (after beating the Cowboys), and we’re what everybody thought now (after losing to the Raiders),” said Rivers, who is preparing for his 118th consecutive start. “We can’t ride that roller coaster by any means, because as quick as a team can be 4-0 or 5-1, they can find themselves 6-6. We’ve just got to keep our heads down.”

Hardwick, headed toward his 56th start in a row, said “forgetting about the pain” is part of rebounding from defeat, and come what may, from either the previous game’s outcome or the sideshow of the week, “we dial into the plan” and get “ready to go with a good positive energy.”

Gates, in his 11th year of cashing Chargers paychecks, says it is rookie head coach Mike McCoy who creates the initial “buy-in” among players to focus on only the task at hand. Having plowed through so many seasons together, however, seared into the veteran players' collective memory banks several lessons.

“We know what it takes,” said Gates, “and that’s kind of how we go about our business.”

Two lessons Gates cited are: 1) “You have to deal with some kind of adversity to be successful. You have to overcome. We understand that 2-3 is not to our standard, but we also understand that in this league it’s a marathon,” he said; 2) "One game doesn’t define you. One loss definitely doesn’t define you, and a win doesn’t define you. We have to keep playing every single week. I still come out and prepare when we’re 2-3 like it’s 5-0.”

These Chargers have won both games when coming off a defeat.

After the Opening Night loss in which they blew a 21-point lead, they won as 7.5-point underdogs against the Eagles behind 419 yards passing and three touchdowns from Rivers.

In Week Four, coming off a loss at Tennessee, where a late touchdown beat them, they defeated the favored Cowboys. The oldsters led the way. Rivers threw for 401 yards, Weddle shut down star tight end Jason Witten, Gates caught 10 passes and Hardwick led a patched-up line.

If speed on defense and true depth may be lacking, Hardwick and Weddle said they like what they've learned about this team's fiber.

“We’re as tough as nails,” said Weddle, a starter in 82 of the last 85 games. “We’ve got great character. We’re never going to be out of a game. We’re never going to quit on each other – not on our coaches, not on each other, not on this organization. We’ll fight to the end, and that’s a great characteristic.”